By It looks like we could be seeing a drone only carrier in the near future to overcome China’s anti-carrier missile advantage:
The U.S. is developing aircraft carrier-based drones that could provide a crucial edge as it tries to counter China’s military rise.
American officials have been tightlipped about where the unmanned armed planes might be used, but a top Navy officer has told The Associated Press that some would likely be deployed in Asia.
“They will play an integral role in our future operations in this region,” predicted Vice Adm. Scott Van Buskirk, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, which covers most of the Pacific and Indian oceans. [Associated Press]
This concept has actually been discussed for a few years now and Tom Ricks has even recommended calling any drone based carrier the USS Obama.
She hasn’t seen...
4:34 am on May 17th, 2011 1
Maybe some day the carrier will be a drone, too.
5:37 am on May 17th, 2011 2
SkyNet, eh?
Or sorta like the thing from StarCraft?
6:09 am on May 17th, 2011 3
If this thing ever becomes self aware and goes looking for Sarah Connors, it isn’t going to like what it finds.
Targeted for termination:
http://blastr.com/assets_c/2010/07/HamiltonCHUCK1-thumb-550×288-43530.jpg
Terminator self destructs:
http://quotes.whyfame.com/files/2010/02/linda_hamilton.jpg
7:42 am on May 17th, 2011 4
A Drone Carrier (CVD?) could be as small as the “jeep carriers” of WW2 and still carry as many as 1,000 drones of varying sizes and capabilities plus repair facilities, munitions, fuel, and spare parts… And it would not need a huge flight deck, either…
In fact, it might look like this: http://www.cruiseweb.com/carnival-imagelibrary/ships/ship-Liberty-w630x300.jpg
but more likely like this: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/ships/carriers/images/cve-9a.jpg
The US Navy likes their carriers… And a UA carrier or two would probably be additions or replacements to a regular CVN’s Battle Group…
8:36 am on May 17th, 2011 5
You should put quotation marks around “China’s anti-carrier missile advantage.”
That missile is about 99.9% hype.
11:42 am on May 17th, 2011 6
Thanks for carrying this, GI. There has been a big mobile anti-missile radar in the Seattle harbor this past week, in for maintenence from the waters, I think, around Hawaii. In any event, it is always interesting to see how our “anti-North Korean missile” defenses are rapidly denounced by the PLA as “anti-China.”
1:49 pm on May 17th, 2011 7
Adam 6, isn’t it the same thing?
3:38 pm on May 17th, 2011 8
A big soccer ball like thing?
11:49 pm on May 17th, 2011 9
A USS Obama? Perish the thought! Please don’t mess up the Navy ship naming anymore than it is already! Or if you absolutely have to, make it an AOE type so it can live up to its namesake, and “spread the supplies around,” etc.
2:35 am on May 18th, 2011 10
Isn’t there already a USS Obama?
http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/sea_shadow_1-450×277.jpg
4:20 am on May 18th, 2011 11
A USS Obama is inappropriate while he’s in office, or even still living. Maybe twenty years after his death will be soon enough even to think about naming a ship after him.
4:49 am on May 18th, 2011 12
Obama does seem a little dinghy… and his economic policy has been junk… and, despite the “peace prize” he has been a man o’ war…
…it will be so hard to decide.
Considering what he has dropped on the country, perhaps a steamer is most appropriate.
9:29 am on May 18th, 2011 13
Speaking of “junk”, what’s this new drone based carriers called again?
12:51 pm on May 18th, 2011 14
Glans wrote
There’s a USS George H.W. Bush, a USS Jimmy Carter, a USS Ronald Reagan, and a USS Gerald Ford, all named while those presidents were still living (Carter and Bush41 still being very much alive even now), not to mention a USS Bob Hope, a USS John Warner, etc., also named while said people were alive.
I don’t think it happens during their term in office (did Bob Hope have a term of office at NBC or the USO?), but it does sometimes happen when they’re alive.
If a special type of ship is developed during Obama’s term and at Obama’s direction, I don’t have any problem with naming one of them the USS Barack Hussein Obama. If they have an R&R ship frequented by prostitutes, it could be called USSBHO, and pronounce it “Us be ho.”
1:07 pm on May 18th, 2011 15
Tom wrote:
Ooh… someone’s sounds like they’re getting a bit sensitive there.
The problem with China’s rise, Tom, is that China can’t really produce much good stuff on their own. They have to buy or steal and then reverse-engineer it, or try to get someone to set up a factory in China and then reverse-engineer it. True, other countries do the same (from the US to Japan to South Korea), but there’s something about the socialist-with-Chinese-characteristics-getting-rich-is-glorious Chinese system that doesn’t allow the nation to make the jump to innovation, like the US, Japan, South Korea, etc.
And that’s just gotta hurt, huh? If you are Beijing agitprop, that’s just really gotta stick in your craw. If, on the other hand, you really are just the typical South Korean you clearly are not but try to make yourself out to be, your grossly atypical China-embracing stance just falls apart when it comes to the notion that China cannot protect Korea if Korea were to fall into its sphere.
Korea being adequately protected by Big Brother China is so 18th century. Korea was thrown to the wolves (i.e., France, then Russia and Japan) when massive China showed that, in the end, it couldn’t protect its closest ally. The result was that Korea was annexed by Japan and then brutalized and nearly culturally destroyed by Imperial Japanese militarists, then temporarily divided by “liberators,” one of whom took half of it away as a land grab for international communism (the division was only about disarming the Imperial Japanese forces; it was the Russians and then their North Korean puppets who solidified a division by disallowing the United Nations to run free elections in the north and then declaring a second, competing Korean government after the UN-sanctioned ROK was established).
What will China-the-protectorate do if Russia decides it needs an ice-free port? What will China-the-protectorate do if a newly militarized Japan (which would be the result of a no-US Northeast Asia you have wet dreams about) decided to expand control over disputed territorial waters? Would China-the-protectorate use the Korean Peninsula as a place of conflict with Japan (as they did in the past) when their own territorial disputes with Japan come to a flashpoint?
China is a failure when it comes to protecting its allies. This is partly because it doesn’t really care about allies but rather having buffer states. South Korea would be utterly and fatally foolish if it were to spin itself into the inept arms of China.
1:13 pm on May 18th, 2011 16
“Yes, we can!”, eh Kushibo?
2:25 pm on May 18th, 2011 17
Yes, Kushibo 14, ships have been named for living former presidents, and I still think it’s inappropriate. We should wait twenty years, or fifty years, and see if we still think they’re worthy.